What are /r/etymology's favorite Products & Services?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

>WOW! I saw the pictorial in the Feb issue and boy was I impressed.. Those moms are babes!! Almost unbelieveable, especially that union worker one towards the front, you almost have to look twice...

>We have a term for it around here, its called "MILF"

>It stands for "Mothers I'd Like to Fuck". >Maybe that is what they should have titled the section :)

>-Just my $0.02

>Mike

Probably because it has become fossilized in the phrase "a merry Christmas and a happy New Year", which goes back at least as far as 1740 (Wikipedia claims that the carol We Wish you a Merry Christmas goes back to the sixteenth century, but I see no hard evidence for that claim).

By the way, in England "happy Christmas" is at least as popular as "merry Christmas".

"Concessions at a ballpark or at another venue are called that because the stadium has granted the right to sell food to a certain provider."

At least according to this: http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/concession

I'd never really thought about why it was called that until you asked!

This is a folk etymology, afaik - can you give a reliable source on this?

The earliest use from OED 1811, which predates your story. Keeping in mind that words, especially slang, are unlikely to appear in text from that long ago until they've been around for a while, your version is pretty obviously just wrong. Stories as convenient and precise as this are rarely true, and should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

From US. Congressional Hearings on Immigration in 1920:

> Mr. Hudspeth. ... I stood here and did all in my power to keep the "wetback " and the " grayback" and the " blueback " from coming across. And I stand here to-day asking for that. > >The Chairman. Let us get a definition of those terms. What is a wetback "? > >Mr. Hudspeth: You have heard a "wetback" described; he is a fellow that crosses the river surreptitiously. > >The Chairman: What is a "blueback"? > >Mr. Hudspeth. That is just a little bit of pleasantry; they are all the same. They are the fellows that come through the underground passage, that has been very ably and aptly described by Mr. Roberts, and that I know nothing about in my district. > >Mr. Welty. The reason they are called "wetbacks" is because they get wet in coming across, is it? > >Mr. Hudspeth. Yes: they get wet when they swim the river coming to this country. They come over here; and the only ambition they have is to fill their stomachs when they come here.

Same goes for Esprit de l'escalier. French speakers claim not to have heard of it, or at least in the meaning given in English.

There are a few steps skipped there. Consider the periodic table of the elements, or the periodicity of trig functions, or the way birthdays happen periodically. The common thread is cycles and things happening cyclically.

cc: /u/ViciousPuppy

>The sense of "sack, dismiss" is first recorded 1885 in American English (earlier "throw (someone) out" of some place, 1871), probably from a play on the two meanings of discharge: "to dismiss from a position," and "to fire a gun," fire in the second sense being from "set fire to gunpowder," attested from 1520s.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fire

The Latin doctor means "teacher, instructor". In the earliest citation from the OED (1st edition) from 1303, the word has the meaning "wise men of the Church":

> He [St Gregory] telleþ mo hymself a lone > > Þan alle þe doctours do echone [each one]

The earliest unqualified citation with a medical meaning was from 1400.

It appears to have become popular around the turn of the twentieth century as a milder version of oaths like "Good God". In fact, we can see evidence this "mincing" as it happened:

The original 1899 version of Sam Walter Foss's poem An Art Critic contains the exclamation "Good Lord!". But when the verse was anthologized the very next year as part of Werner's Readings and Recitations, vol, 24, the oath was replaced with "Good grief!".

https://www.wordnik.com/words/biweekly

> adj. Happening every two weeks.
adj. Happening twice a week; semiweekly.
n. A publication issued every two weeks.
adv. Every two weeks.
adv. Twice a week; semiweekly. See Usage Note at bi-1.

Yes, it is as depressing as when they added "figuratively" as a synonym of "literally"

"Never mind" is literally what it means, where mind is a verb meaning to pay attention to something.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/common-nouns/mind

For the curious, this is because Google essentially has a very important rule: You cannot show the Google Robot things you don't show people who click on the link from Google. Content that Google indexes has to be unblocked for people visiting from Google.
If you don't do this, they'll remove you from their search results (which is bad news for traffic, obviously!)

This tactic works for paywalls on lots and lots of sites: Copy the URL for the article, go to Google, and search for the URL. In all likelihood this will get you a non-paywall version.

If you want to get even trickier, download this plugin for Chrome and set the referrer for merriam-webster.com to be google.com -- Never see their paywall again!

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the proto-Germanic root *taljanan means "to mention in order", which generally seems to cover both senses of the modern word.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tell

The meaning "angry, irritated or hostile" seems to originate in African American slang.

This reference has cites back to 1996, but there seem to be significantly earlier hits, going all the way back to the Blues number Don't get Salty, Sugar from the mid-1940s.

There is no straightforward answer on this. They did bring quite a few, but the effect on the overall lexicon is perhaps not as large as popularly assumed since many of the words are low-frequency; by a token count rather than a type count, the English lexicon is still very much Germanic. The impact on the overall language was somewhat superficial in the sense that most borrowing was of "wholesale" lexical items without much morphological (or phonological, syntactic) influence. You might be interested in checking out this corpus study.

Bottom line: Most quantitative studies show that Norman influence has been overstated.

Most Indo-European languages have a negator ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European negation *ne.

Greek is a famous exception, with classical Greek using ou(k) as its negator.

> The late American Indo-Europeanist Warren Cowgill incisively etymologized this as coming from a pre-Greek phrase *ne oyu kwid, essentially "not on your life, not ever".

Fortson, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction p. 148.

I am sure it is simply a change of spelling from original Leksvold. For the etymology (in Swedish), which suggests it is in origin a place name, see:

Ortnamnen i Göteborgs och Bohus län: Ortnamnen i inlands nordre härad. 1. del. Bebyggelsenamn. 2. Naturnamn, Göteborgs högskola. Institutet för ortnamns-och dialektforskning, Elanders boktr., 1975, p. 399. https://books.google.com/books?id=TNUnAQAAMAAJ&q

"Leksvold skulle kunna innehålla appell. lek, betecknande forntida lekplatser."

"Leksvold could contain the root 'play' [lek], denoting ancient playgrounds."

Vold can mean "wall, bank, rampart" (thus, an enclosed place).

ok so this says the ance/ence thing can be decided on the sound of the preceding syllable.

The only word I can think of that includes sounds similar to "eusocialance" is "nonchalance", so I'd go with "-ance" as more correct.

As for alternatives ... Haplometrosis is "the founding of a colony by a single queen." ...

"Haplo" just means single, so "Metrosis" is the founding of the colony.

So how about "Metrosis"?

In the early years of the United States, the verb squat ("to sit on one's hams and haunches") was extended into a new meaning: "to settle upon new, uncultivated, or unoccupied land without any legal title and without the payment of rent". The first citation in the OED is a letter from James Madison during the debate upon ratification of the US constitution in 1788:

> Many of them and their constituents are only squatters upon other people's land, and they are afraid of being brought to account.

> Apparently the name of the place in London is actually pronounced /ˈmæl/ (rhymes with "pal"). For those of you who grew up saying it that way, in America, "mall" rhymes with "ball".

That is true -- but historically the word seems to have rhymed with "ball" even in England:

> No sooner has he touch'd the flying ball, > > But 'tis already more than half the Mall,

(Waller, On St James's Park, as lately improved by His Majesty, 1661)

> we see them in the Maul and in the Park

(Anon. Reflexions upon Ridicule, 1706.)

Reck seems to have fallen out of favor, but is a word. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/reck

>verb (used without object) 1. to have care, concern, or regard (often followed by of, with, or a clause). 2. to take heed. 3. Archaic. to be of concern or importance; matter: It recks not.

The *sed- root is a classic demonstration of Indo-European ablaut:

from *sed-, we have English sit
from *sod-, we have English sat
from *sēd-, we have English seat (a loan from Norse).
from *sōd-, we have English soot (stuff that sits)
from *sd-, we have English nest (place to sit)

Earliest hit I can find in Google Books is:

> We have given this brief sketch of Steele's life, because it illustrates, if it does not prove the truth of the proposition that the same individual may be both simpleton and philosopher,—totally unfit to provide for his necessary wants, yet skilled in the mysteries of science, and rich in the lore of accumulated ages ;—a walking contradiction, possessing all the qualities of mind necessary to make him great in the world of philosophy and letters, and at the same time destitute of the requisite judgment to conduct successfully the affairs of every-day life; a giant in theoretical disputation, but a liliput in practical wisdom.

"Sir Richard Steele", from Arthur's Magazine, 1845.

Interestingly, they're distinct in a different way now than they were a hundred years ago.

It was once more common that 'sex' chiefly meant the difference between men and women (in whatever way one defined those terms) and 'gender' was (primarily) a grammatical term.

Nowadays 'sex' is specifically biological gender, and 'gender' is primarily the social construct. According to Google's copy of Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, using "gender" to divide people instead of nouns was ~~originally~~ at one point only done in jest, and the OED observed it began to be standard for the social/cultural construct only since the 1960s.

This change in the sense of the word didn't go unlamented (I have seen much older peeves about it than /u/evilpeter's).

A theory From Wikipedia:

>The term may possibly derive from Proto-Germanic *dukkōn, represented in Old English finger-docce ("finger-muscle"). The word also shows the familiar petname diminutive -ga also seen in frogga "frog", picga "pig", stagga "stag", wicga "beetle, worm", among others.

I also came across this (The Etymology of Old English Docga), which agrees on the -ga suffix while suggesting that the first syllable referred to the colour of a common breed (a word related to dusk).

FIrst of all, tryst is on the rise, not the decline. I've certainly heard it from young and old sources (it's an especially popular name for nightclubs).

As others have noted, technical jargon is the most frequently dropped word type. It's very specific and not used by the majority of speakers so it disappears quickly.

Slang is also very ephemeral by nature. We know groovy but it sounds old fashioned.

Other words are dropped from common use because they aren't needed as often. For example, affuage was permission to cut down wood specifically for fuel. It saw a steep decline during the industrial revolution and is now completely gone. It takes an unabridged dictionary to even find it and usually they'll note it was only used in the 19th century.

A Google N-gram search shows that the phrase is first seen in books in 1975. By 1993 its usage has peaked. I know this isn't a full answer, but perhaps another breadcrumb.

In common law, "first degree" and "second degree" are found in Hale's Pleas of the Crown (1736):

> In cases of felony there are two sorts of principals, viz., principals in the first degree, that do the fact, be it in murder or any other felony, and principals in the second degree, that are present aiding and abetting the felony

This makes the "first degree" more serious than the "second degree". This idea was copied when the concept of "first degree murder" was invented by the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1794:

> The common law recognized no degrees of murder; all unlawful killing with malice aforethought received the same punishment — death. ... The rigor of this rule led to widespread dissatisfaction in this country. ... In 1794, Pennsylvania divided common-law murder into two offenses, defining the crimes thus: [A]ll murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate, or premeditated killing; or which shall be committed in the perpetration, or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, or burglary, shall be deemed murder of the first degree; and all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder in the second degree. 1794 Pa. Laws, ch. 1766, 2.

Don't have an explanation for burns.

Apparently, yes.

EDIT: If you read French, here is an early dictionary entry from just after the litre was defined in 1793, showing both its derivation from Greek λίτρα and also how it replaced the older litron as a measure of capacity.

> Lightning is first attested in 1781 as a slang term for gin ... though it later came to mean 'any strong, often low-quality alcoholic spirit'.

A-Z of Whisky by Gavin D. Smith

https://books.google.com/books?id=KRuR1JjymkIC&lpg=PT169&ots=H4oJzhUTaP&dq=lightning%20term%20for%20whiskey&pg=PT169#v=onepage&q=lightning%20term%20for%20whiskey&f=false

Edit: Also, this appears to be the original source of the 1781 reference.

I'm afraid it's actually boring old '-ism'. From oed.com:

> French optimisme (1737 in sense 1a (see note below); 1788 in sense 3) < classical Latin optimus best (see optimum n.) + French -isme -ism suffix.

So it's actually the result of sticking 'ism' on to a word with an m in it (Latin 'optimus').

Pessimism is similar but inspired by optimism. Also from oed.com:

> classical Latin pessimus worst (see pessimum n. and adj.) + -ism suffix, after optimism n.

Etymonline has this to say of euphemism:

> 1650s, from Gk. euphemismos "use of a favorable word in place of an inauspicious one," from euphemizein "speak with fair words, use words of good omen," from eu- "good" (see eu-) + pheme "speaking," from phanai "speak" (see fame (n.)).

> In ancient Greece, the superstitious avoidance of words of ill-omen during religious ceremonies, or substitutions such as Eumenides "the Gracious Ones" for the Furies (see also Euxine). In English, a rhetorical term at first; broader sense of "choosing a less distasteful word or phrase than the one meant" is first attested 1793. Related: Euphemistic; euphemistically.

Quite interesting.

So you have 'best-ism', 'worst-ism', and 'good-speak-ism'.

-ism has lots of meanings - Wiktionary has a good list.

It comes from the cloud classification system of Luke Howard ca. 1803. https://books.google.com/books?id=HbajgFGBrTEC&pg=PA252&lpg=PA252&dq=cumulonimbus+Howard+cloud+nine&source=bl&ots=b_4PqntMMe&sig=y9XTYLw9aHaOROM_JnkWqsPfuiQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kODSVOSRIImpyQTQ2IKgDA&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAw

ngrams says you're not the only one, but there aren't many.

"Span" and "expanse" are unrelated, though, and "spanse" is exceedingly uncommon.

Oooh, I know stuff about this :)

D was a language suggested to be a successor to C++. it was first released in 2001, and has similar syntax https://dlang.org/

Also a fun etymology fact is the early computer language BASIC had a retro-fitted acronym attached to it, because back then EVERYTHING was an acronym. So instead it was Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

The act of creating an acronym retrospectively like that got named Backronym. :)

> because off and of are obviously not the same

Actually, "off" and "of" are historically the same word. "Off" originated as a strong, emphatic, form of "of".

> If British English no longer says "off of" I'd say that's probably the newer permutation and "off of" is likely the older one.

You could say that, but you'd be wrong. "Off of" is an innovation, although an old one: it's found from the mid-seventeenth century.

The first evidence I find for the "tonite" spelling is as an abbreviation used by telegraph operators connected with the railroads: see The Telegraph Instructor (1901).

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-706/dandelion

>Dandelion is used for loss of appetite, upset stomach, intestinal gas, gallstones, joint pain, muscle aches, eczema, and bruises. Dandelion is also used to increase urine production and as a laxative to increase bowel movements. It is also used as skin toner, blood tonic, and digestive tonic.

Grain comes from French through the Latin granum, which is related to "kernel" and "corn". source

Berry comes through the germanic languages. source

If I had to guess, I would say that historically French cereals got the French terms (grain ~~and kernels~~), and the historically Germanic ones got the Germanic terms. Just a guess though.

edit. Kernel is Germanic.

The short answer is that there is no answer. This is a good example of the pure arbitrariness of English spelling. There is no logical or historical reason why this discrepancy should exist.

Etymologically,

receipt derives from Middle English receite, receit, from Anglo-French receite,receyte, from Latin recipere.
deceit derives from Middle English deceite, deseyte,desaite, from Old French deceite, from the verb deceveir, ultimately from Latin decipere.

In both words, the /p/ was pronounced in Latin, but lost by the time the words entered Old French. Historically, we sometimes find both words spelled both with and without the classicizing "p". Thus in Chaucer we find the spellings deceipt and receyt. The spelling receit is found as late as 1778; deceipt is found in reports of legal cases from the 1690s.

Is it all languages or just the english language? Perhaps it will more likely change phonetically, but scripts (alphabet) changes may have lower chances of change. Especially that we have established the IPA which can help with distinguishing and classifying phonetic sounds. The current status of the languages are prettu much adapting to the English script of writing so if this is what you're referring to as possible change in the future? Probably, yes. Though again, these is less possible because we really dont have a mandated universal language of use due to political, and social constructs. Audible had an interesting article about this: https://www.audible.com/blog/science-technology/hear-what-scholars-think-english-will-sound-like-in-100-years/

Here's an attestation of 'break the news' from 1752

It seems to be that around 1700 triple started to become the dominant word. As to why, I don't know.

In the case of the descendants of American slaves:

> Once they became free blacks, most former slaves took surnames and it was a common practice to assume the surname of one's former owner.

Cruson, The Slaves of Central Fairfield County, p. 33

> The Freedmen's Bureau instructed former slaves: "Every freedman having only one name is required to assume a 'title' or family name. It may be the name of a former owner, of any other person..."

Regosin, Freedom's Promise: Ex-slave Families and Citizenship in the Age of Emancipation, p. 55

There is no more reason to suspect irony in a black person named "White" than there is in the case of a white person named "Black".

I'm from New Orleans. Born 1971, never heard "map pencils". It's always been "colored pencils" to me. What timeframe were you hearing this phrase in?

edit. Google Ngrams gives me ONE hit for "map pencils", EVER.

etymonline.com has a pretty straightforward answer to that :

> word-forming element from Old French -eis (Modern French -ois, -ais), from Vulgar Latin, from Latin -ensem, -ensis "belonging to" or "originating in."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=-ese

Until someone else can provide some more specific info, you can check out the etymonline entry: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=shot

It's interesting to see how old the word is and all of the variations.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary, the sense of "tell" meaning "to convey information to someone else" comes from Old English, going straight back to its proto-Indo-European roots, just like the word "tale."

There's some candidates, but perhaps nothing that's a perfect match.

hrædlic is glossed as "quick, sudden, premature".

The OED analyses this use of "all but" as "everything short of", and dates it to 1598:

> Man is a little world and beares the face,

> And picture of the Vniuersitie:

> All but resembleth God, all but his glasse,

> All but the picture of his maiestie.

The implied meaning of "The city was all but destroyed" is something like:

All bad things except destruction happened to the city

If you're familiar with formal logic, this would be a second-order quantification (over predicates rather than objects).

I've never heard this expression before -- but it goes back to the nineteenth century:

Random Remarks, by Rod Random; Puck magazine, New York, Apr 9 1884

> "You are more fun than a barrel of monkeys," said Albacinda to me, the other evening. > Now, I am not entering into the question of my humorous capacity. Whether I am or am not more amusing, as a man, than a barrel of monkeys as monkeys, matters little. If I cause Albacinda's chaste breast to thrill with gentle merriment; if I curve the perfect bow of her cherry lips—why, that, beloved reader, is none of your business. It is a private affair, between Albacinda and me. > > But the dear girl's remark furnished me with food for reflection. It is, said I to myself, a most felicitous figure, this barrel of monkeys. It expresses, indeed, the highest potentiality of humor—the ludicrous raised to the nth. > Now, when you come to think of it, there can't be anything funnier than a barrel of monkeys. One monkey is funny enough, all by himself. He is funny per se, and he is funny in everything he does. He is funny in his eating, in his drinking, in his fighting, in his lovemaking—funniest of all in his toilette. > God gave him a tail to be funny with, anyway, and he has improved on the designs of Providence. He gets all the humor out of that tail that there is in it. > Now then, imagine what a barrel of monkeys would be—a whole, real, barrelful of writhing, crawling, twisting, fighting, convolute monkeys, all doing a Graeco-Simian wrestle at once! Why, there is a feast of humor there that would make an alligator smile his back teeth out. * > > And Albacinda says I am more fun than a barrel of monkeys! >

Amazon Link because everyone deserves to read it at least once.

It's very short, around a hundred pages, and only $6 USD with free Prime shipping.

It's a truly powerful book from an actual Holocaust survivor.

> To accommodate those in the farthest reaches, actors used masks with megaphone-like mouthpieces called personae from per, "through" and sonare, "sound." The actors eventually became so closely identified with the masks, that they would later be collectively designated "the dramatis personae," "the members of the cast."

This is an ancient folk-etymology. The generally accepted account today is that Latin persona derives from Etruscan *phersuna, the adjectival form of Phersu, a mask-wearing bearded character found in Etruscan tombs. You can see him here (scroll to page 289)

According to Google N-Grams, the supremacy of "address" over "speech" lasted approximately a century, from the 1850s to the late 1950s.

Perhaps a reflection of the decline of formal political oratory?

> dumb down -- to reduce the intellectual level of teaching or instruction.

Clarke, American SLANG and Sayings: Especially for Businessmen and Tourists, 2011.

I meant this in reference only to the Stories in a building. However a little more digging has brought me to a different conclusion.

The explanation given on etymonline (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=story&allowed_in_frame=0) is pretty vague. it says "Perhaps so called because the fronts of buildings in the Middle Ages often were decorated with rows of painted windows." looking at the etymology of the word "storied" brought me to this explanation (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=storied&allowed_in_frame=0). If "Storied" means "ornamented with scenes from history" I assume the shopfronts of medieval buildings were "storied" in this manner, which then came to mean a level of a building.

The Tempter, the Wicked One, Abaddon, Apollyon, the Destroyer, Beelzebub, God of Flies, Elfe, Dunghil God, the Idol.

From Beveridge's Thesaurus theologicus, 1710. https://books.google.com/booksid=vFQHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA120#v=onepage&q&f=false

Also see pp. 30-31 of Defoe, The History of the Devil, 1845 (surely the names wouldn't have changed much since late 1700's): Old Serpent, Great Red Dragon, Accuser of the Bretheren, the Enemy, Belial, Beelzebub, Mammon, Angel of Light, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of the Power of the Air, Lucifer, Abbadon, Appollyon, Legion, God of this World, Foul Spirit, Unclean Spirit, Lying Spirit, Tempter, Son of the Morning.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ryZIAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q&f=false

Comes from the 1970s, according to this source. "A general intensifier; the coarse synonym for 'as anything'".

This seems plausible. The name "Vermont" does not seem to have been used until the Westminster Convention of January 1777, which declared the independence of "New Connecticut, alias Vermont"

According to the OED, the answer is no. It derives from a dialectal meaning of rig as "A trick, scheme or dodge; a method of cheating or swindling", itself of obscure origin. Here's a citation, reprinting a "flash song" from 1783:

> I'm up to all your knowing rigs,

> Ye biddies queer and flash;

> I'm company for scamps and prigs,

> Sometimes for men of cash.

> I believe (and I'll admit up front, this is just my theory) that the reason that both "preemptible" and "preemptable" exist, and there is no standard for which is used where, is because it's a fairly recent word. Dictionary.com suggests the first attested use of "preempt" (a back-formation from "preemption") as being around 1840-1850. I'll bet that "preemptible/able" is even more recent - possibly within the last few years, being that my browser is putting red squiggly lines under both spellings.

That would have been my guess too, but preëmptible is found as far back as 1860 in connection with the various "Preëmption Acts" passed by the US Congress to make land available for farmers and railroads.

Pre-emptable, on the other hand, doesn't show up in Google Books until 1908.

> argus - Oxford dictionary > > Origin: late Middle English: from Latin, from Greek Argos, the name of the mythical watchman with a hundred eyes.

>DIALECT. A friend of mine tells me that she has heard peffy used in North Lincolnshire in the sense of tough, stringy: e.g., "These beet-roots is very peffy" According to Peacock's ' Manley and Corringham Glossary/ peff means the pith of a plant. G. W.

>[Of. pejf, to cough faintly, familiar in the North. Might stringy beet-root be called peffy, as apt to make you cough ?] - NOTES AND QUERIES, 1897

I'm supposed to be working on a boring paper on Cuban economics, so finding this was a welcome distraction. The first possibility strikes me as more likely.

In the same vein, there's loot and shampoo, which has always surprised me.

in- and a- are complicated prefixes because they can originate from prepositions. It's more common than you think:

The golden idol is {valuable/invaluable}.
The situation was very {tense/intense}.

One can inherit one's heritage, and there's no opposition of meaning.

Several of them have fallen to secondary spellings (intrust -> entrust, inmesh -> enmesh).

The way I understand the difference is that further indicates conceptual difference (You could not be further from the truth), while farther indicates physical difference (Illinois is farther from New York than Ohio).

I may be wrong. Here's a bit on it from the Oxford Dictionaries website. So the distinction may not be as cut and dry as I was led to believe.

I did some searching on Google Books and found at least two instances from the 1850s.

A report from the Louisiana State Board of Health complaining about a new Federal rules that required them to answer to the National Board of Health in 1855:

> This alleged notification, as aforesaid, intended as libel upon this and other State Boards of Health, and, by thus defaming them, to bulldoze the Congress of the United States, into granting said National Board of Health their accustomed moneys and salaries...

Then from an open letter in 1857 from Charles Edward Pickett to Squire P. Dewey. This was strictly about California real estate in relation to mining and both men were Californians:

> Another scheme was to get cases transferred from a Court, where the judge proved proof against your venal overtures, to one where his honor had less scruples of conscience. I will cite a memorable instance of this sort-- the transference of the "Pueblo" case from the United States District Court where it had lain several years, after finding yourselves unable to bribe, bamboozle, or bull-dose Judge Hoffman to declare that myth a reality.

Anyway, all this proves is the term (at least as a synonym for browbeat/intimidate) did not originate with the voter intimidation news stories. I would still guess that if it was used that way by the 1850s, there was most likely much older usage that it was borrowed from.

I don't think the origin of the phrase is entirely clear. It appears to originate in New York in the late 19th century, and the original meaning seems to have been "to bluff":

> Dis is only a bluff dey're makin'—see? Dey're Talkin' Tru Deir Hats. Did y'ever see a kid when his old woman wanted to make him wear gloves fer de fust time? He'll beef an' kick like a steer an' let on he won't never wear 'em, an' all de time he's ded stuck on 'em. Dat's der way wit' dem blokies.

New York World, May 13, 1888. (quoted at Farmer (ed.), Americanisms Old & New, London: Poulter, 1889, p. 290.)

EDIT: downvoted -- really?

The earliest example of "no way in hell" I can find in Google Books is surprisingly recent -- from 1964. Even allowing for taboos surrounding "hell", I expected something older.

EDIT: I also searched for "cold day in hell". That dates from at least 1906 -- where the phrase is put into the mouth of a caricatured Irishman.

If "cold day in hell" substantially predates "no way in hell", perhaps the latter phrase arose as a combination of

"no way"
"cold day in hell"

As far as literature goes, "cringe" really took off about 35 years ago:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cringe&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccringe%3B%2Cc0

The division sign was in Greek called a lemniscus, from a word meaning 'ribbon', or 'twining', and represented the relationship of the two numbers on either side of the line.

I think it's worth considering the huge influence of the Pythagoreans, which were not just a mathematical society, but a mystery-school, also. Squared proportions, and other geometric relationships, were said to have metaphysical meaning beyond calculation. So the "entwining" concept of the lemnisc probably had mystical connotations at the time.

~~After some googling, it looks like your choices of direct source are either the Mail or Vice. Take your pick for reputable journalism. :~~

edit: actually, Dr Booth uploaded this. While it's, uh, a bit sparse on details, since the story really boils down to "look at this guy's name" (and the date it was written down) I'm not sure what else there is to say beyond evidence that it exists.

OP - Did you see this research paper?

"Haydi, Hadi, Hayda” Kelimeleri Üzerine / About the Words "Haydi, Hadi, Hayda"

If you can't get access, I'd be happy to email it to you.

I’m not sure what the field is called, but if you’re asking because you want to look into it more, the creator of the “History of English” podcast has an audio book about the history of the alphabet: https://www.amazon.com/History-Alphabet-Kevin-Stroud/dp/B00BNQVHWK

I haven’t listened to the audiobook, but if it’s anything like the podcast, it’s well-researched and fascinating.

By 1840 there was already a dichotomy between "classical" and "popular" music.

This suggests that it's an reference to an earlier passage from Marlowe's King Edward II:

> ... weep not for Mortimer

> That scorns the world, and, as a traveller,

> Goes to discover countries yet unknown.

Google Books has a hit from 1893: a rather fascinating journal article entitled "What the Poor Man can do to escape Cholera -- and the Doctor".

I'm sure I first heard it in an older movie, but I can't remember which one.

This comment is what reminded me of it. Also found it here.

And I am in the southern US.

Google Books (assuming it's behaving itself) can antedate Hofstadter.

Crickmay et al., Imagination and method: designing as a response to life as a whole : a report, Volume 1, Open University Press, 1972:

> A skill must be exercised in choosing between one and the other which could be called meta intuition, or meta rationality. (p. 10)

> 2.5 Meta thinking (table of contents)

I've never heard this expression, but it looks as if it may be regional to the US south:

> In Mississippi dare and double dog dare are used by children in quarrelling.

Hubert Anthony Shands, Some peculiarities of speech in Mississippi, 1893.

> KENTUCKY WORDS ... Children in quarrelling say, "I dare you," "I dog dare you," "I black dog dare you," "I double dog dare you," "I double black dog dare you." [In Michigan dare and double dare.]

Dialect Notes, Volume 1, American Dialect Society, 1890

(Note the non-rhotic pronunciations in both of these sources).

Likely related to the term 'redline' which in its original sense would have been a line crossed with a pen through someone's name. So 'crossing a red line' could be in the sense of performing an action that seals one's fate, typically in a negative way.

>1610s, earlier bucolical (1520s), from L. bucolicus, from Gk. boukolikos "pastoral, rustic," from boukolos "cowherd, herdsman," from bous "cow" + -kolos "tending," related to L. colere "to till (the ground), cultivate, dwell, inhabit" (the root of colony).

Online Etymology dictionary.

yes - 'get bent' is a shorter form of 'get bent out of shape' - which means to take offense. The opposite is clearly 'don't get bent out of shape'.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/get-bent-out-of-shape

Does the book give any support for this claim? I'm just a teeny little bit suspicious of it, given that

other sources don't give this etymology
although cumulo-nimbus was defined as the ninth cloud system at the International Meteorological Conference of 1891, it isn't the highest cloud type; it's also associated with rain, making it an odd choice to refer to something happy.

BTW, Tchaikovsky's "Pathetic Synphony" was being described as such in English-speaking program notes as Late as 1917.

I've no doubt it derives from the Irish surname Hooligan or O'Hooligan. However, ~~unless Google Books is lying to me, the term can be antedated to the mid-nineteenth century. A collection of the Duke of Wellington's speeches, published in 1854, has an entry in its index for "pursued by a mob of hooligans" referring to riots in Birmingham.~~

EDIT: Google Books is lying to me. It fused a book published in 1854 with another, related book from 1927. Damn you Google!

The spelling of "John" makes no sense in English either. And "Jhon" is found in English (or at least Scots).

It was originally meant to be pronounced "wee-ja" (see the following advertisement from 1892: https://books.google.com/books?id=ip0VAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false ['"OUIJA" (TRADE-MARK) PRONOUNCED WE-JA. PATENTED 1890']), but I guess that the final vowel in -ja began to be pronounced "jee" (at least in American English) under the influence of the long -i- in the first syllable (a linguistic phenomenon called "vowel harmony").

> Sense of "finished" is attested from late 14c. In radio communication, used to indicate the speaker has finished speaking (1926). Widely used as a prefix in Old English and other Germanic languages.

Source.

Hope this helps? It doesn't say where or why it was used to mean "finished," but it seems to have been around for awhile.

Ngram chart of "why do not we" - most are from >1970.

Here's a usage chart from google. It looks like phial was the heavy favorite in the mid 1700s, but vial already saw some usage. In the mid 1800s vial caught up, but it wasn't until the early-mid 1900s that it became the clear favorite.

(I was curious why the usage was so relatively high in the 1700s – it turns out that a device called a "leyden phial/vial" was key to experiments with electricity, including Franklin's famous kite experiement. And of course, scientific papers make up a large part of the works from back then.)

As for why, the fact that "phial" sounds exactly like "file" might have something to do with it. [Edit: Or maybe not.]

Google ngram shows "embrace of death" trending up during the start of the US Civil War, and peaking two years after, in 1867... as if any war were civil... Regardless, I couldn't find anything for the "sweet embrace of death".

Appears to be 1976

But, google n-gram viewer doesn't list specific sources, I don't think (I don't use it often).

I agree with the other two comments in that the exclamation common to Filipinos is "hala," but do believe it has arabic roots. The exclamation might come from Spanish as according to this page:

> 1. (used to show support) (Spain) a. Come on! ¡Hala! ¡Seguro que metes muchos goles!Come on! I'm sure you'll score lots of goals! b. Let's go! ¡Hala Madrid! ¡A ganarle al Barça!Let's go, Madrid! Defeat Barça! c. Go! ¡Hala, Dani! ¡No te rindas!Go, Dani! Don't give up! 2. (used to express surprise) (Spain) a. Wow! ¡Hala, qué sorpresa! No sabía que vendrías a mi cumpleaños.Wow, what a surprise! I didn't know you were coming to my birthday.

The Spanish exclamation ¡Hala! was derived from the Arabic word yalla, which is defined on Wikipedia as:

> Yalla, with variants Yallah and Yala, is a common expression in denoting "come on", "let's get going", and mostly meaning "hurry up".

Spanish "pasar a la historia", can mean -deppending on the context- that something was very important or just irrelevant.

https://www.deepl.com/translator#es/en/Estos%20hechos%20pasar%C3%A1n%20a%20la%20historia.%0A%0ANuestra%20relaci%C3%B3n%20pas%C3%B3%20a%20la%20historia.

You will be able to “invent” an instantaneous corpus of words you deciphered, by learning the tricks described here. Thereafter, try to learn how your target language builds new words via roots and branches. For example, when I was first learning Welsh I noticed that certain recurring suffixes corresponded to altered meaning of word roots when combined. Hence I could guess that prif combined with ysgol = prifysgol. Separately prif means first or higher and ysgol means school. Prifysgol means university. Next I noticed prif attached to other words and I was able to guess their meaning. In Welsh we have this helpful book to categorize the trends: Welsh Roots & Branches https://www.amazon.com/dp/095241760X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_ZGZ05RTNET629H047H1A

I typed this on a PC in old-reddit, with Markdown-formatted paragraph and line breaks. If it's not displaying correctly for you... I don't know what to say. It's displaying fine for me, and I'm currently using Relay for reddit, which is an Android app.

> Our sixth sense (19thC.) enables us know them for what they are. It’s intuitive as opposed to the physical senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

The use of "sixth sense" to refer to an "intuitive" sense goes back to at least the eighteenth century. It was used even earlier (in the seventeenth century) to refer to sexual pleasure ("pleasure of Generation").

Someone I asked mentioned this character. I feel like someone wouldn't just make a phrase like that up! It sounds kooky. Plus it is also referenced here: http://genius.com/6412326 and here: http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/sand

Barbecue/barbeque has recently shifted in spelling. Until a few years ago, barbecue was the only accepted spelling. But people were abbreviating it as Bar-B-Q or BBQ. Then the q seeped from the abbreviations into the full word, barbeque -- even though the letter q makes no sense whatsoever in this position in an English word. (Regularly, a word spelled barbeque would be pronounced *barbek or *barbekwe or something similar.) Now, barbeque seems to be the accepted spelling, to the utter horror or all English majors.

Merriam-Webster is still resisting the change: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/barbeque

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